(July 4, 2016 at 7:01 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(July 4, 2016 at 1:50 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: If you don't have any choice about what you think then your thoughts could be anything at all for no reason in particular.A computer has no choice, but its behavior is perfectly logical. You're conflating determined reason with epiphenomenalism. That doesn't make any sense why you would think that one would imply the other.
Jor, you know better than to compare a computer which has been designed to perform logical operations and brains which evolved as a means to survival. Mental events that yield reproductive advantages to the species do not necessarily correspond to things as they are. From a skeptical point of view, it has not been shown that mental processes can reveal things-as-they-are. Also from a skeptical point of view, it hasn't been shown that things-as-they-are even conform to reason.
Alistar Ham insists that in a deterministic universe people still make choices. Someone has a choice only when he or she could do otherwise. Rationality is about weighing options and picking the one that seems better. In a deterministic universe, no one can do anything other than what he will do pick other that what he would pick. That's not really a choice.
